Medical imaging may be used to create images of the human body. Conventional medical imaging modalities include radiography (e.g., X-rays), fluoroscopy, magnetic resonance (MR), ultrasound and nuclear medicine (e.g., positron emission tomography (PET) and single-photon emission tomography (SPET). Imaging methods may use computer assisted tomography (CT), which employs tomography created by computer processing. CT methods include X-ray CT, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET-CT) and Photon Counting CT.
Photon Counting CT includes detectors that utilize energy bins for counting photons in different energy ranges to simultaneously acquire a plurality of images, each corresponding to material exposed to a different level of photon energy. Accordingly, Photon Counting CT may be utilized to differentiate between different types of materials (e.g., materials in anatomy) within one scan.
In a conventional dual energy CT system, anatomy is exposed to two different ranges of photon energy (e.g., a low range and a high range). Each image shows a portion of anatomy exposed to one of the two different ranges of the photon energy. Data (e.g., luminance intensities of pixels corresponding to materials in the anatomy exposed to the two energy ranges) acquired from each image is typically displayed using a 2D scatter plot. The 2D plot is used to distinguish between different materials in anatomy exposed to the low energy range and high energy range.